Adrenalin Misfits Kinect Review

The misfit of Kinect's launch lineup.

By Jack DeVries

Updated: 4 May 2012 10:37 pm

Posted: 4 Nov 2010 4:03 am

The Kinect launch is seeing a large number of similar looking games, which makes it hard to figure out which ones are worth buying. There are even multiple snowboard/skateboard style games to choose from. I'll make this simple for you all. Konami's Adrenalin Misfits in not the board game you're looking for.

Adrenalin Misfits is a pretty standard snowboarding game. There are a variety of event types that you can choose from like slalom course, big air jumps, trick runs, and straight races. Completing an event earns you the next course in that type, and sometimes a new board or a character. You progress through the events at your own leisure, giving the game a very simple arcade vibe (which is good for a snowboarding game).

Ok so it's a Kinect game, so the important part is whether the controls work. And yes, they do. Adrenalin Misfits controls fine, for the most part. You bend at the waist to turn, lean forward to speed up, jump to jump and lift your foot up and stomp down to activate items.

I+believe+I+can+fly.

The game working is about all I can really say for it. It's a totally functional, totally boring little snowboarding game. Pulling off tricks it limited to twisting your body or lifting a foot while your character is in the air. It's just not engrossing to do two actions over and over, especially during the trick competitions. The items aren't particularly useful or interesting. Various colored blasts of energy that knock you down for a moment.

At the end of each event the game shows off photos it took while you were playing. It seems to pick good spots to snap photos, usually during jumps, so I was always looking particularly goofy in each shot (which is all the fun of those photos, right?).

The characters are a variety of talking animals that are all "hip" and "edgy". It just comes off looking like a bunch of furries desperately trying to be cool. No amount of neon vests, baggy jeans, or gold chains can hide the fact that these characters are goofy and ugly.

The tracks are varied, which is nice. There's a couple snow courses, some cool waterfall river courses, a lava field, a desert, and more. The tracks are the best thing about the game. They're pretty long, and all feature branching paths, shortcuts, big jumps and everything you'd expect on a big snowboard course.

There is, of course, multiplayer. The two player split screen worked just fine. Board games seem to be good matches for Kinect multiplayer because players stay stationary.

I'll also say that the game's menu system is pretty good. It seems like a silly thing to point out, but every Kinect game does the menu differently, and sometimes it's bad. Adrenalin Misfits has players lift their right or left arm to the side to move back and forth, and hold their arm straight up to select. It's more movement than most games, but it was also the fastest and simplest. I never accidentally selected anything or felt like it was taking forever like I have with nearly every other Kinect game.

Verdict

Adrenalin Misfits isn't broken, it's not hard, it's not hideous. It's just kind of boring and uninspired. I love snowboarding games, but I couldn't get into this game. If there were more things to do, whether it was different tricks to pull off, or more controls for weapons, it would feel more engrossing to play it with motion controls. Konami played it safe with this one, and ended up with a title that feels like an extended tech demo more than a full-fledged game.